Grant: Idea to Innovation

The Tufts Center for the Study of Drug Development estimates that it costs $2.6 billion and 12 years to take a pharmaceutical drug to market. Clinical trials evaluating drugs for treating central nervous system disorders fail 93% of the time, causing wasted costs of around $200 million for every failure. Animal disease models and cadaveric human tissues serve as the main tools for identifying toxicity and efficacy issues with potential drug targets before they move into patient-based clinical trials. Animal models are the current standard for evaluating the efficacy and toxicity of drugs at the pre-clinical stage, requiring significant costs and labor. However, their predictive capacity does not directly mimic the effects observed in human patients. While human tissue slices cultured in vitro offer slightly better predictive ability, their supplies remain limited. 3D bioprinted neural tissues can possibly serve as a more accurate pre-clinical tool for predicting the toxicity and efficacy of potential drug targets. Such engineered tissues would significantly reduce the possibility of drug failure at the clinical trial stage, creating a dramatic reduction in the cost of drug development The goal of this project is twofold: 1) it will validate a novel bioink for printing 3D neural tissues and 2) it will develop physiologically relevant bioprinted neural tissue models derived from human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs). Dr. Willerth, an internationally recognized expert in neural tissue engineering, brings over 16 years of experience in biomaterials and stem cell biology to the project. This project will take our novel intellectual property to market while training several highly qualified personnel in 3D bioprinting. Additionally, several companies have indicated strong interest in commercializing this work as detailed in our letters of support. *